Quotes About Decision-making

If we all allow ourselves to feel the unconscious, divine, kinky pleasure we've been suppressing, then we are left with just our intelligence to guide our decisions, and that's great. Your own intelligence and consciously chosen principles are a much better ethical compass than your reactive feelings of guilt.

There isn't a definite right and wrong anyway. Sometimes we do what seems wrong, but we have good reasons for doing it, so it's not wrong after all.

But the main thing I've learned, I learned all by myself, no help needed. I learned not to get my tongue pierced. Because if you're getting it pierced for the reason why I think you're getting it pierced and you're not good at that thing to begin with, no little piece of jewelry is going to save the day.

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.

The secret of managing is to keep the folks who hate you away from the ones who haven't made up their minds yet.

People are more likely to object to nudges that appeal to unconscious or subconscious processes.

To understand why sludge matters, let's begin with the assumption that people are fully rational and that in deciding whether to wade through sludge, they make some calculation about costs and benefits. Even if the benefits of that wading are high, the costs might prove overwhelming.

Social scientists emphasize that people use the "availability heuristic," which means that we assess risks by asking whether a bad (or good) event is cognitively "available." It

But it is true that in its usual forms, consequentialism seems to conflict with some of our deepest intuitions, certainly in new or unfamiliar situations.2 For example, human beings appear to be intuitive retributivists; they want wrongdoers to suffer. With respect to punishment, efforts to encourage people to think in consequentialist terms do not fare at all well.3

Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.

Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair.

Edwards followed what he believed the proper procedure whenever contemplating a move: he agreed to convene an ad hoc council of clergy that would meet in May to advise him what to do.26

If I had stabbed the mad king in the belly instead of the back, would you admire me more?

Sometimes the storm winds blow so strong a man has no choice but to furl his sails.

No one has ever died of restlessness, but rashness is another matter. We've planted seeds, let them grow.

Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe... an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast... would you do it? Without question? Without question? No. The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. I'd ask how much.

It is a terrible thing we contemplate, a vile thing. Yet we who presume to rule must do vile things for the good of the realm, howevermuch it pains us.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.

A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances.

but a wise man never closes all the options.